Culture

TORONTO, June 14, 2013—Older patients who know they are at risk of fractures will make positive lifestyle changes to avoid them, such as exercising, wearing proper footwear and taking supplements, a new study has found.

The findings are important because much previous research in bone health has focused on medications or found that people make negative lifestyle changes such as reducing housework or leisure activities because they are afraid of falling, said

Dr. Joanna Sale, a researcher at St. Michael's Hospital and lead author of the study.

Research from the University of Adelaide shows middle-aged women are more likely to suffer depression from a common medical problem that they find too embarrassing to talk about: urinary incontinence.

However, help is available for women if they seek medical advice, researchers say.

In a study of the experiences of women with urinary incontinence, researcher Jodie Avery found that middle-aged women with incontinence (aged 43-65) were more likely to be depressed than older women (aged 65-89).

Madrid, Spain, 14 June 2013: Data first presented today at EULAR 2013, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism demonstrate the benefits of a nurse-led programme on patient self-management and the management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) co-morbidities.

Madrid, Spain, 14 June 2013: New study data presented today at EULAR 2013, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, demonstrate a high prevalence of NSAID prescriptions in patients at risk of ischaemic heart disease (IHD).

Published evidence suggest significant cardiovascular implications of NSAIDs for patients, with an immediate mortality risk demonstrated in patients who had suffered a myocardial infarction (MI, heart attack) even when prescribed treatment duration was less than one week.2

Madrid, Spain, 12 June 2013: Data presented at EULAR 2013, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, show that novel antibody biomarkers could significantly improve diagnosis in rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Four candidate biomarkers – UH-RA.1, UH-RA.9, UH-RA.14 and UH-RA.21 – were investigated; as a group they demonstrated 85% specificity for RA, and were present in both early and seronegative disease, with 36% of early RA and 24% of RF- and ACCP -negative patients testing positive.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic and Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University researchers have partnered on a study showing that Peruvian physicians rarely sought to involve their patients in shared decision-making regarding medical care. This was true for physicians at public and private clinics. The findings are being discussed in Lima, Peru, at ISDM 2013, an international conference on globalizing shared decision-making held from June 16-19. (Follow the proceedings and participate in discussion at ISDM 2013.)

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a way to trigger reproduction in the laboratory of clusters of human cells that make insulin, potentially removing a significant obstacle to transplanting the cells as a treatment for patients with type 1 diabetes.

Efforts to make this treatment possible have been limited by a dearth of insulin-producing beta cells that can be removed from donors after death, and by the stubborn refusal of human beta cells to proliferate in the laboratory after harvesting.

SOLOMONS, MD (June 13, 2013)—A new study shows that combining improved oyster restoration methods with limits on fishing in the upper Chesapeake could bring the oyster population back to the Bay in a much shorter period of time. The study led by Michael Wilberg of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory assessed a range of management and restoration options to see which ones would have the most likelihood success.

A new statistical analysis shows the world population could reach nearly 11 billion by the end of the century, according to a United Nations report issued June 13. That's about 800 million, or about 8 percent, more than the previous projection of 10.1 billion, issued in 2011.

The projected rise is mostly due to fertility in Africa, where the U.N. had expected birth rates to decline more quickly than they have.

Pro-market policies for developing countries have long been based on the belief that increasing average income is key to improving public health and societal well-being.

But new research on India published in the journal Social Science and Medicine shows that literacy - a non-income good - has a greater impact on public health in India.

Madrid, Spain, 13 June 2013: Data presented at EULAR 2013, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, show that up to one-third of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients discontinue or change therapy within the first year of treatment.

Loss of efficacy was the most common reason given (35.8%), followed by safety (20.1%), physician or patient preference (27.8% and 17.9%, respectively) and access to treatment (9.0%). Rates and rationale for treatment discontinuation were similar for both tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) and non-TNFi biologics.

Madrid, Spain, 13 June 2013: Epidemiological data presented today at EULAR 2013, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, demonstrate that pregnancy carried to childbirth (parity) increases the risk of ACPA-negative* rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

The increased risk was demonstrated in women aged 18-44 who have had a child (2.1, 95% CI 1.4-3.2), but not in older women, and was more pronounced among those women with delivery during the first year of symptoms.

Madrid, Spain, 13 June 2013: Data presented today at EULAR 2013, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism, demonstrate that indicators of depression are stronger predictors of work disability in early arthritis than disease activity or response to therapy.

CORAL GABLES, FL (June 12, 2013) -- Language is formed by giving meaning to sounds and stringing together these meaningful expressions to communicate feelings and ideas. Until recently most linguists believed that the relationship between the structure of language and the natural world was mainly the influence of the environment on vocabulary. Now, a new study published in the June 12 edition of PLOS ONE shows that there is a link between geographical elevation and the way language is spoken.

Patients with more timely access to GP appointments make fewer visits to accident and emergency departments, suggests a study published today.

In the largest analysis of its kind to date, researchers at Imperial College London related A&E attendance figures in England to responses from a national survey of patients' experience of GP practices in 2010-11. One question of this survey asked patients whether they had been able to see a GP within two weekdays when they had last tried.